Heavyweight: Now with two UFC heavyweight titles
to his name, Velasquez also becomes a two-time first-team
All-Violence member. After a disappointing 2011, culminating in his
64-second network-televised title loss to Junior dos
Santos, Velasquez put on a grotesque beating of Top 10 regular
Antonio
Silva before battering dos Santos to take his title back in a
bout that will be a reference point for gut-turning 25-minute
beatings for a long time to come. He took down dos Santos a
staggering 11 times while landing 210 total strikes. Hell, Silva
landed just three strikes to Velasquez’s 53. It is no wonder that
Velasquez is the all-time leader in Significant Strikes Landed per
Minute (SLpM) according to FightMetric, landing 6.37 per 60
seconds. If he is not the most violent MMA fighter to date,
Velasquez is perhaps the most punishing.

Light Heavyweight: For as long as there as been an
All-Violence Team, Jones has been a first stringer. Admittedly,
2012 was a down year for the 205-pound king, but context allows
“Bones” to excel past his competition here. He could not finish
Rashad
Evans in a fairly tepid fight; however, he still dominated an
outstanding MMA fighter in a fashion that inspired pathos from the
viewer. FightMetric tallied the final effectiveness scores at
400-134 for the champ. However, he sealed the deal in September.
Sure, Vitor
Belfort might be a “young dinosaur” or whatever the heck he
called himself. However, Jones casually yanking out of Belfort’s
armbar before battering him helpless and casually snapping his arm
with a keylock as if he were a white belt deserves all praise. To
boot, he even launched an offensive against Zuffa and managed to
record a stoppage win over UFC 151. No other fighter this year is
guilty of any violence like that.

Middleweight: In a year where few middleweights
consistently delivered thrills and chills, Manhoef stood out. His
year started out by kicking Yoshiyuki
Nakanishi’s kneecap so hard that he ripped a bloody vortex in
his own shin, resulting in a no contest. He then used rock-headed
South Korean Jae Young
Kim for target practice, blasting him with left hook after left
hook until he got tired of punching him. His one-hitter quitter of
Ryo
Kawamura as he attempted to bail on a double-leg shot was
priceless and a primer on how to punish a desperate wrestler. For
whatever reason, however, “No Mercy” saves his best for New Year’s
Eve and on Dec. 31, he delivered again, gut checking Denis Kang with
a brutal knee to the liver. Manhoef’s 2012 mixtape of carnage is
well worth the time it will take you to YouTube it all.

Welterweight: Barely a .500 fighter and having
lost four of his last five in the UFC, Matt Brown
seemed like a prime candidate to catch a Zuffa pink slip in 2012.
Instead, working with trainers Matt Hume and
Mark Beecher, he produced a 4-0 campaign in the Octagon -- the only
fighter to do so in 2012 -- and stopped three of his foes. The
likes of Chris Cope,
Stephen
Thompson, Luis Ramos and
even Mike
Swick hardly represent the welterweight elite. However, Brown
did not simply best them; he trashed them. Brown's stalking,
brawling style featured cleaner, straighter punching this year and
produced some devastating results, most notably making Swick do the
Nestea plunge live on Fox to end the year in style. A Matt Brown
beatdown is akin to a technical bar fight; UFC welterweights ought
to consider themselves lucky no pool cues are in sight.

Lightweight: Being a well-rounded, action-oriented
fighter is no guarantee of All-Violence status, especially at 155
pounds, where that description is commonplace. However, Miller
simply brings a greater level of thrill with a greater level of
regularity. After wiping out Melvin
Guillard with his submission savvy, Miller was stopped for the
first time in his career courtesy of Nate Diaz's
guillotine in a predictably awesome fight. By the time his UFC 155
bout with Joe Lauzon
came around, everyone and their mother knew that action would
ensue; yet few, if any, anticipated the actual level that would
result. In one of the year's best contests, Miller mutilated
Lauzon's face into a bloody gnarl, looking like a man possessed in
the pursuit of his prey. When Miller shows up on your TV set
wearing four-ounce gloves, the highlight of your evening is
probably forthcoming.

Featherweight: Swanson might have been the year’s
most violent MMA fighter. Swanson’s hands were once known strictly
as brittle, but, in 2012, they proved to be brutal. After
humiliating George Roop
and sending his mouthpiece into orbit, Swanson dropped jaws by not
just out-punching skilled boxer Ross
Pearson, but by punching out his lights. Did gangly Brazilian
offensive wiz Charles
Oliveira make him blink in September? Nope. Swanson’s overhand
right wiped out his foe out and thrust him into 145-pound
contention. Simply put, Swanson kicked the ass of every man he met
in 2012 in debasing fashion.

Bantamweight: One of MMA's biggest pound-for-pound
punchers, Rivera earned a second tour of duty in the UFC the
old-fashioned way: by improving his game and knocking out dudes.
After ripping up Michael
McDonald's younger brother, Brad
McDonald, in December 2011, Rivera started 2012 with a bang,
blasting rugged Mexican Antonio
Duarte and leaving him unconscious for several minutes. In his
UFC return, Alex Soto
wanted no part of his power and backpedaled for 15 minutes while
getting repeatedly dinged in the head. The Calgary Combative Sports
Commission might have taken away Rivera's July win over Roland
Delorme after testing positive for an over-the-counter
stimulant, but it cannot take away the 52 significant strikes and
world of pain that Rivera put on the Canadian in just four
minutes.

Flyweight: Moraga is one of many reasons that John
Crouch's MMA Lab is becoming known as much more than “the place
that Benson
Henderson trains.” A 5-0 campaign with three stoppages is
always nice, but Moraga saved his best for the Octagon. Following
his UFC debut crushing of Ulysses
Gomez, the Arizonan had a true flyweight-style action scrap
with Chris
Cariaso, softening him with a flurry of strikes before segueing
into a nasty guillotine. That is precisely the sort of dynamism
onlookers expect of 125-pounders.